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Thursday, July 15, 2010

Don't Have Time? Change Your Mind

Here's the thing: sometimes you have no idea how your writing will go when you start.

Sometimes the thought of starting is so stressful, you'll do anything to avoid the work.

But you have to get started. You need a time in your day when you always write. You need to train your brain into knowing what that time is.

Then just turn up.

And let the writing take care of itself.

They say it takes about a month to change a habit.

That's why rehab centers use a 28 day program. A month is roughly how long it takes for the body and mind to adjust to a new set of rules and circumstances.

There's no real cure for an addiction. The best therapists know that replacing a bad habit with a new obsession is way more effective than simply denying an urge that will no doubt resurface.

The reason why most drug addicts go back to taking drugs is that, even though they may have rid themselves physically once, their situations, their daily lives, their friends and influences conspire to get them back on the road to their ingrained obsessions.

Our brains are chemically designed to associate pleasure with familiarity. This is why self destructive behavior can be so frustrating to observe - and counter.

This is why too, if you sometimes have a defeatist attitude towards your writing - one that may tell you that you'll never succeed and that writing is a waste of your time - the attitude will resurface.

It's not really that writing is a waste of your time, it's just that you've trained your mind to become comfortable with that fall back notion.

The only way to counter negativity is to consciously dismantle the things you tell yourself and replace dark thoughts with positive ones. Do this for a month and it will become a habit.

Cynics will say this is too easy an approach. I would argue that cynicism is the comfort zone of the underachiever and can spread like a virus amongst groups of individuals.

This is why success gurus will tell you to avoid negative people.

We all have synaptic paths in our brains that are well traveled. Failure can often seem inevitable and our minds recognize this reality - and will find ways, facts and means to endorse this crude simplification.

But that's the lazy way to approach the problem.

Reality also tells us that many people succeed despite huge odds, through luck or determination and persistence.

We need to train our minds to accept that despite the experience of the majority, there are those that rise above the mediocre and persist in their belief that anything is possible.

History is abundant with examples.

Edison, Einstein, Shakespeare, Da Vinci, all the way up to the present time. Dan Brown, Stephen King, JK Rowling. All experienced the idea that success was for others - but still they refused to accept they were wasting their time.

Theirs was a higher calling. The work was not just the means to an end, it was the end in itself. A great artist's work becomes his obsession, his primary motivation - his reason to be.

I often get emails from writers who have lost touch with their muses, or have let their daily lives get in the way of their dreams.

They speak as though this is be expected, that somehow it's acceptable that our goals are there to be quashed, abused and ignored - most often by ourselves.

But rather than endure what we regard as reality and the nature of things, we must rise above these attitudes.

Writers don't always succeed because they're lucky or have rich benefactors that enable them - or have more time than the rest of us.

Successful writers succeed because they make time - even when they have busy schedules or day jobs or children and a hundred other pressures. You might even say they don't succeed in spite of these extra pressures but because of them.

Pressure and the ability to find time to pursue a dream as well is the mark of a committed artist.

To be able to change your brain into seeing the value of your work in the midst of everyone else's negativity, cynicism and yourself being just plain too busy should be your real goal - every day.

If you don't have the writing habit, and you want to be successful writer, you've got to force one onto yourself.

Make a time each day, and stick to it.

Find a place to write, even if it's perched on the edge of your bed, and go to it, everyday.

Give your creativity time - and give yourself time to write.

Beg, borrow or steal the time if necessary.

Do it for a month and writing will become a habit, then an addiction, then an obsession.